


Daisies

by edelscribe



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Aristocrat Gilbert, Falling In Love, Historical Hetalia, M/M, Mentions of War, Noble Gilbert, Period-Typical Homophobia, Poor Roderich, Soldier Roderich, Unnecessary Use of Repetition, Unspecified Setting, Vague Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 07:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16697737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edelscribe/pseuds/edelscribe
Summary: Fall in love slowly and then all at once.





	Daisies

“You’re no fun, Roderich. You’re supposed to act scared if a soldier threatens you.”

From his hidey-hole amongst the daisies, Roderich smiled up at the boy standing over him, “But I’m not scared, it’s just you.”

“You have to pretend, that’s why its called playing pretend!” Announced the soldier, shaking his head as though his friend was missing the obvious, “Do something wimpy, fraidy-cat. You’re normally very good at that.”

“I’m not any sort of cat, especially not an afraid one!”

“Would you prefer Erszi played with you, then?” The soldier insisted, “she’d make you put on silly dresses and then you’d really be a wimpy-fraidy-cat.”

Roderich, looking down at the daisy clenched in his pale fist sighed, lamenting his lost daisy-chain making time and likely the state of his clothes by the end of this whole ordeal, “No…”

“There you have it then. Now, make a scared face.”

“Fine. Hey- don’t take my daisy! Give it back, Gilbert!”

-

A soldier is supposed to be hard and sharp like steel, and rough around the edges. He’s supposed to be confident and clever, quick-witted and quick-thinking. He’s supposed to be able to deal with any situation he comes across with determination and detachment. 

Gilbert liked to think he was all of those things, that he was just as capable as any man and twice as talented. He’d grown up knowing that he would be a soldier one day. Knowing it in his heart. Gilbert was born to fight and win and earn glory for his country. 

Gilbert also knew that fraidy-cat Edelstein was never meant to be a soldier. He was meant to be an aristocrat and swan around in fancy clothes and speak Latin and bow and scrape with the refined elegance only he possessed. 

Perhaps that was why it had been so difficult to come to terms with watching his childhood friend grow up to be a soldier, and he himself be locked away with books and rules and bowing and scraping. Like now, for example, as he walked stiffly from his tutor room down to the gardens of the palace, books tucked under his arm and gait disjointed enough to show it was forced. 

Every lunchtime, Gilbert would take a break from his lessons and meander down to the gardens to sit by the lake to eat his lunch. The pattern was so in place by now that the servants had given up plating his food and simply left it swaddled in napkins in a basket amongst the daisies.

Unwilling to admit that true reason for his daily ritual, Gilbert convinced himself of the qualities of fresh air and the way his voice carried over the stretch of water and the freedom away from the palace it brought him that he could surely get just as easily between the tulips at the back of the stables. And yet, and yet, something continued to lure Gilbert back to his patch of daisies by the lake, and Gilbert was utterly sure of himself that it had nothing to do with the pretty guard who walked past this spot like clockwork at exactly 2 o’clock every day.

As though having been brought simply by Gilbert pointedly not thinking about him, Gilbert’s guard appeared, and Gilbert very specifically did not perk up like a puppy whose owner had just returned home. 

“Hey, Edelstein, do you want a pear?”

Like a wind-up toy running out of energy, the guard ground to a halt a few feet away from Gilbert on the gravel path, face turned toward him and expression conveying slight amusement at the abrupt offer, “I shall be late in finishing my round.” 

“You’re late every day.”

“I cannot walk quickly.”

Gilbert grinned, “And yet you talk to me.” 

“I am obliged to, my lord.”

“Is that insolence? I detect insolence. That’s punishable you kno- “

“I’ll take the pear.”

“Good choice.”

The two lapsed into silence as the guard deviated from his path to sit amongst the daisies with his pear clutched between unfairly delicate hands for a man of battle. They made a stark contrast; one in bright military blues and reds, the other in softer colours but of richer cloth; Gilbert with his books under his knee and poor Edelstein with his gun slung over his back. 

“Who did you have today?” The guard eventually inquired, looking out across the water, “Learn anything you’re keen to pass onto me?”

“Old man Rochat again, the miserable bastard. I can assure you, Edelstein, there’s nothing of value to pass your way.”

The guard looked vaguely disappointed, eating his pear a little more sulkily than was perhaps necessary for having simply been declined interesting tit-bits.

“And you, Edelstein? Learn anything of value today?”

“Only that reloading a gun breaks all of your nails and leaves you soaking your hands in rosewater all evening.”

Gilbert scoffed at the reply, shaking his head in dismissal and nudging the guard with his shoulder, “So fragile, Edelstein. Perhaps I can convince you to show me some more grips?”

“I spend each and every day practicing grips, why should I show you even more?”

“Because I am your lord and I lend you my books.”

“Hmph.”

Rather than bother trying to convince the guard to spill the secrets of warfare Gilbert so sought, he instead settled for thumbing the hilt of the guard’s ornate sword, tempted to drag it from the scabbard if only to hear the delightfully satisfying sound It would make. 

“I would get in more trouble than I already am for lingering here if I allowed you to handle my sword.” The guard hummed after a while, the sound of small smile on his lips.

Gilbert’s lips quirked a little in response and he gave the handle a gentle pull, feeling the shift of metal against leather, “No one would know.”

The guard shook his head, placing his hand over Gilbert’s own, forcing him to return the weapon to its home, gently but firmly, “You would trip and fall, and stain the beautiful lake with your dirty blood.”

Gilbert hesitated, tempted to make an entirely crueller joke about the guard’s own dirty blood, but instead he settled for an altogether more petulant reply, “My blood is blue, and anyone would be lucky to see it.”

“Blue?”

“Because I’m-“

“Yes, thank you, my lord, I’m sure I understand.”

“Call me your lord again one more time, Edelstein.”

“And you’ll what?” 

They were too close. Fingers atop one another, eyes meeting, faces inches apart and Gilbert’s torso pressed against the guard’s side in an attempt to reach across his torso. He withdrew. A tactical manoeuvre; giving his forces time to regroup and recuperate. Yes.

“I’ll- I’ll eat my lunch on my own in my rooms and you’ll have to spend this walk every day wondering if I’ll be here,” Gilbert announced with renewed confidence, “poor Edelstein, come wind come rain, hoping to see his lord out on the grass, offering him fruit and books to read, but coming up empty-handed every time. And his lord shall be warm and dry surrounded by all the fruit and books he could ever want. Maybe he’ll find a nicer guard to share his sword with?”

The guard watched Gilbert spin his little fantasy of his guard all on his own, and the perceived disappointment he would feel at being discarded, and found he didn’t much like the idea of that turn of events. “You may practice with my sword tomorrow when I have no drills.”

And wasn’t Gilbert over the moon then? His guard all for himself, and a sword to play with? He might give his guard a kiss if he so wanted one. “So you can keep an eye on me properly?”

“So I can keep an eye on you properly, Gilbert.”

-

When Roderich remembered the boys they once were, and the men they had become, it weighed heavy in his chest. Forced to adapt to their circumstances the little boy who liked to play music and make daisy-chains had become a guard, a soldier of blood and iron, and the other boy who threw stones and used sticks for swords had become a noble. And yet, in the secrecy of an empty barn on one of Roderich’s rare free days, they ceased existing solely as their roles within society and started being something else entirely. 

Where Gilbert was skittish and withdrawn with his emotions, a juxtaposition to his overbearing and border-line arrogant nature, Roderich was not afraid of himself. He was afraid of many things- such as deep water and snakes and the constant sound of explosions that ran on a loop through his mind- but he had never been afraid of his feelings, and certainly not the ones he had for Gilbert. 

With the sun high in the sky above them and their stiff clothes long gone leaving them in creams and browns and lighter clothes until you couldn’t tell their status one from the other, except perhaps for the way Gilbert held himself, and the way Roderich sprawled by his side without a care for his posture after hours and hours of drills with a ramrod straight back. Roderich had no qualms, then, with reaching over and taking the hand of his lord. That wasn’t to say it didn’t worry him; it would be a barefaced lie to suggest his heart didn’t race, half expecting Gilbert to threaten to have him arrested, but at the very least he could do it. 

(“You don’t worry that you overstep boundaries?” Gilbert had asked the first time Roderich had taken his hand, or at least, the first time he had taken his hand while they both remained sober. 

“No,” Roderich had replied, “I’m not scared, it’s just you.”)

Gilbert, for his part, tangled their fingers together and used his free hand to point between the bare rafters at a bird hovering high above, a lame attempt at distracting from his own embarrassment, “Can you remember what that one is called?”

Narrowing his eyes to spot what Gilbert was pointing at, Roderich recognised this as revision of the newest book his lord had lent him, “Sparrow Hawk?”

“Which type?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” insisted Gilbert, “you need to know these things if you are to be a part of my household.”

Sighing, Roderich squeezed his hand a little as though in reprimand of such wishful thinking, “I cannot be a part of your household, education in birds or no.”

“Do I detect pessimism? I was fairly sure I banned that.”

“Only realism.”

“Details, details. Now, which bird is it?”

Lifting his glasses from the bridge of his nose to push them into his hair and squint up at the sky, Roderich shook his head, “Eurasian?”

“Levant. Look at its chest. None of the lines a Eurasian Sparrow Hawk has. This one is darker, plainer.” Gilbert pointed out, eventually allowing his hand to fall back onto the grass that surrounded them.

“You’re exhausting.”

“I do try.”

A lapse in to silence again, and Roderich felt an uncomfortable weight settle in his chest, “Did you bring your flute?”

Gilbert looked a little stricken at the question, shaking his head slowly, “I couldn’t risk it getting damaged if we were going to the lake.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can entertain myself just as well with your company.”

“But it does,” Gilbert pressed, leaning up on his elbow to look down at Roderich, “It’s been weeks since you’ve had a chance to play.”

“I have my violin at home.”

“And it hardly works, Roderich. I’d give you all of my instruments if I could.”

That earned Gilbert a smile, “You’re going soft.”

“Perhaps.”

-

The pounding of footsteps down a corridor, the slamming of a heavy door, the breathing of a man fuelled by bitter anger. “That is heresy!”

“You would call yourself a god?” 

A tightened grip, a flash of teeth between lips pulled back in a sneer, “I call myself whatever I damn well like. And I call it heresy. How could you?”

“Is it so wrong of me?”

“It’s betrayal.”

“Betrayal of what? I cannot betray something that was never there!” A voice straining with emotion, catching at the lifts of the sentences.

A shove, stumbling feet and a grip lost, “Betraying trust.”

“My point still stands.”

“His hands-!”

“Were right where I wanted them. Where yours are too cowardly to sit.” The scraping of wood on stone. A sigh, though not one meant to calm.

“Don’t you dare look away from me, don’t you dare.”

“Or what, my lord? Or what?”

“Sodomite.”

A crack, sounding through the air like a whip. A stinging palm, a stinging cheek. A hitch of breath. “Look me in the eyes and say that again.”

The silence of a man who holds too much confidence and too little regret.

“I cannot.”

“You disgust me. Look at me for once in your life. Look at me.”

The rake of eyes upwards, the rise and fall of shoulders, a defensive stance. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough.” 

“I know.”

-

“You’re going to war?”

“I am.”

“It should be me.”

“Never, my lord.”

-

Never in his life had Gilbert been separated from the object of his affections (for that was what he had begun to begrudgingly admit his guard was) for such a long length of time. Letters exchanged between them were impractical at best for they could hardly say anything at all in fear that the written words would implicate them. 

As such, Gilbert was forced to suffer his lunches in the daisies with no swords, and no revision of books, and certainly no guard to keep him company. News from the front was rare and from sources of poor credibility. He waited patiently each day to hear of his guard, and each day he grew more and more sick of hearing nothing but word of victories and defeats, and never names, and never his guard’s. 

If Gilbert allowed his mind to wander for too long he would make himself sick and be useless to those around him. What if his guard was hurt? Dying? Dead, without Gilbert there to ridicule him for bleeding out from such a minor wound. 

Instead, he preoccupied himself with making plans for his guard’s return. How pleased would his guard be to see all of the books he had collected for him? The skills he had learnt from practicing with the blunted swords above the mantel. Gilbert was sure his guard would be ever so happy. He even learnt to make chains of daisies, and he told his guard so in his letters, hoping to make his guard smile, even if he never replied.

Gilbert received just one letter. As winter drew closer and the images of his guard cold and alone filled his mind during a time that should be celebrated by rich foods and warm fires, Gilbert received a letter. The font was hurried and messy, made of big loops and vowels all pressed together like the men in their trenches shuddering in the biting wind. Gilbert almost wished the letter had never come. 

His guard was optimistic. He was positive and reassuring and everything Gilbert wished he wasn’t. Gilbert knew his guard, and he knew he could complain for days on end about the smallest things.

His guard was lying, and Gilbert didn’t cry, because he had the heart of a soldier. 

-

Roderich was a soldier. He was hard and sharp like steel, and rough around the edges. He was confident and clever, quick-witted and quick-thinking. He was able to deal with any situation he came across with determination and detachment. 

He didn’t want to be.

-

When Gilbert found his Roderich at the end of the war, returning with the last dregs of the army, spat out and discoloured like a faded painting, peeling and flaking, Gilbert didn’t let him go home. 

Gilbert had stopped caring, while his Roderich had been away, Gilbert had realised that he wasn’t satisfied with what he had. Fleeting lunches and daisies and sparrow hawks weren’t enough. He wanted duvets and gold and comfort, and he wanted them all for his Roderich.

His Roderich was quiet and pensive, seemingly unaware of the increasing finery as Gilbert lead him to his rooms through the open corridors, rumours be damned. His Roderich was a decorated veteran now, self-sacrificing enough to earn him awards, but he shouldn’t have been.

Gilbert could feel the war beneath his fingertips. Could feel the guns on his Roderich’s callouses, could feel the cold in his Roderich’s sinewy arms, could feel the hunger between his Roderich’s ribs. Soap and water couldn’t wash away the marks on his Roderich, and Gilbert didn’t cry again. 

Like a wind-up toy running out of energy, his Roderich had ground to a halt.

-

“And what in god’s name are you wearing?”

“What am I wearing? You look like an oversized peacock.”

“Fashion, Edelstein. You could do with some.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Roderich leant with some amusement against the doorway to Gilbert’s dressing room, watching the man strut about before the mirror in far too many greens and purples. 

“Admit it, you envy this. I buy you so many beautiful garments, and you reward me by dressing in grey of all colours?”

“A leopard cannot change his spots.”

“Then he obviously hasn’t tried bleach,” Gilbert replied dismissively, extending a hand for Roderich to take, “Now come here.”

With some reluctance, Roderich slipped his hand into Gilbert’s and allowed the man to pull him before the mirror, wrapping arms around his waist and propping his chin over Roderich’s shoulder, smiling at his reflection. “See? Compared to myself and the other aristocracy you shall be invisible. You have such lovely looks, Roderich, why not show them off?”

“Perhaps I am not meant for a life such as this.”

“You are meant for me,” Gilbert replied, unimpressed by Roderich’s attempts to escape, “Now, go and change, or I shall-“

“What will you do, Gilbert?”

“I shall refuse you any and all kisses. Now. Go.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am fully aware that in general the connotation of the Germanic word for sodomy (sodomie) is one of beastiality, but I’m sure most of you got what I was going for in terms of Gilbert’s period-typical homophobic meaning. 
> 
> Please leave Kudos/Reveiw - Feedback is super useful to help me improve!


End file.
